Phuz1 wrote:

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Mister Yuck, the "overwhelming information" on safer sex 20 years ago was often conflicting, except in its anti-sex bias - particularly in the AIDS briefing Reagan's Surgeon General sent to every home in the nation in 1987. Some researchers said oral sex was healthy, but they didn't mention you should avoid it if you'd just brushed your teeth or if you had gum disease. And a lot of people had problems with broken condoms because they didn't know they were supposed to use water-based lubes. And most media coverage of AIDS was about the "innocent victims" - think Ryan White - and not about the ways people should protect themselves against HIV. Time and Newsweek weren't about to start talking about buttseks and condoms.

Jack was in his teens, and teens by nature tend to be uninformed or fail to consider the implications of life-threatening actions (binging/purging, driving drunk, having unprotected sex with men or women) because they believe they're invincible. Blaming Jack for being infected is wrong, but I agree that he should be using more of his 15 minutes of fame to draw attention to the negative aspects of long-term HIV illness, particularly in light of the fact infections are on the rise again among younger gays. A better person would be unable to party on while kids fall into the same trap he did.

You're an idiot

Well, actually I was going to point out that I was simply highlighting Jack's amazingly bad karma for attracting such a letter in the first place and then posting it to his blog. But then I read your own analysis, and it's wrong too. Jack could be a role model for people with HIV, if he'd be less dishonest about how he got it. In an interview he described his seroconversion thusly:

I went to a regular gastrointestinal doctor - he didn't know anything about HIV and was a jerk - and he basically said to me, "It's really weird for someone your age to have this. I think you should have an HIV test." I had been safe up until all those times and up until that point. I wasn't even nervous at that point, because I thought there was no way in hell. A few weeks later I went back and he said, "You're HIV positive."

Well obviously he hadn't been safe. If people think it's just some act of God that strikes people randomly, they won't take the precautions they otherwise might. No one should have to explain how they got HIV. But if one does, he shouldn't spread misinformation about the subject.

He's done the same thing with respect to staph infections, imo. While technically right that anyone can get them, the only people I know who get them are gay sluts who do lots of drugs and rub all over each other at sex parties. And he's dead wrong that his HIV didn't exacerbate that infection. None of these people I know who've gotten staph infections needed to be in a hospital on IV drip for 5 days.